


Great Man

by lightgetsin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Deathly Hallows, Gen, Grief, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-06
Updated: 2007-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightgetsin/pseuds/lightgetsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hagrid, during <i>Deathly Hallows</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Great Man

Harry Potter is dead.

He's dead on the ground in the Forbidden Forest, and then he's dead against Hagrid's shoulder all the way around the lake and over the lawn and past the pumpkin patch where the students had kept their flobberworms. Also where he'd taken the job of Professor for Care of Magical Creatures. Dumbledore'd offered it to him up in the tower office over little cups of tea, all proper like, and hadn't minded the way Hagrid'd knocked over the table of tiny, thumbnail-sized sandwiches onto his lap. He'd just told Hagrid to think about it, and then he'd come down to see him later that night just as Hagrid was deciding it would be best to say no.

"It's an honor Sir, truly it is," Hagrid had said when the Headmaster had come and perched beside him on a log to watch Fang scratching about in the mucky pumpkin patch. "But I don't know as I'm right for it. What do I know about teachin'?"

Dumbledore'd just looked sideways at him, then over at Fang, who was digging up a bone he'd buried last summer. "You have a rare and extraordinary gift," he'd said, and Hagrid remembers it clear as day. "You have the gift of loving the unlovely. I can't imagine anything more important young witches and wizards need to learn."

Great man, Dumbledore.

Dead now. Like Harry. Like him, too, in just a little while, once he's done being You-Know-Who's carthorse. Harry deserves better – he deserves trumpets blowing and a parade of centaurs and all the flags in the world lowered for him. But all he's got is Hagrid, and a bunch of slimy little cowards in stupid black robes, and You-Know-Who floating on in front like a creepy solid ghost. Hagrid'd seen his face back there, when he'd killed Harry, looked right into those awful red eyes and the weird snaky nose and lips. He's never seen anything so unlovely in his life, but all he feels is tired old rage.

Terrible . . . thing, You-Know-Who.

That's all right though. Harry'd said so himself. Right in the pumpkin patch too, that was, last year when he'd been coming down all the time without Ron and Hermione. He'd been quiet a lot, and sad and angry all at once, and Hagrid had really wanted to figure a way to tell him how unfair it was, all this coming down to him, James and Lily's little boy. But they'd mostly talked about centaurs and dragons and unicorns instead.

But one night after dark, when they hadn't been talking about anything at all, Harry'd kicked his toe into the dirt and counted the puffs of dust. "If he were a mean dog, y'know," he'd said, "like say if someone'd been thumping on him since he was a puppy and then one day he'd turned around and started biting people, it'd be different. Because he couldn't help it, y'see?" Harry'd looked over at Hagrid, and they both knew who _he_ was. "Except he's not a dog, and I think he could have helped it once, a long time ago. So it's okay, really, because I'm not like . . . like an executioner or anything, I'm just finishing what he started for himself."

Hagrid'd told that to Dumbledore, just a few weeks before the great man died. Dumbledore'd smiled and nodded, and just said, "well done, Professor Hagrid," and then gone back up to the castle when Hagrid asked what he'd done.

Harry had finished, but not like he'd thought. Hagrid is too sick to even cry, anymore.

Great man, Harry Potter.


End file.
